Forgotten
by Nal'dralar
Summary: [JC] When he moved away her heart shattered, when her parents were murdered her life – as she knew it – ended. At 13, homeless, Cindy lives out a living hell, scraping out an existence in Retroville’s darkest suburbs.
1. Prologue

**Forgotten - A Jimmy Neutron fanfic by Nal'dralar**

**Disclaimer: **The author of this story does not own any and all characters used in this story, they are the express property of Nickelodeon and DNA Productions.

**Prologue**

The girl landed face first on the pavement, a resounding thud rising from where her forehead had connected with the hard gravel. The sound of maniacal laughter rose shrilly from behind her.

A trio of males stood laughing sadistically at her motionless form, clearly revelling at the sight of her beaten and battered body.

"Think the bitch has had enough?" one asked, suppressing his urge to resume laughing.

"No, but I've had enough of beating her for one day. How 'bout we go grab some weed?" They nodded and turned back around into the alley from which they had come, ignoring – or simply not caring, about the possible consequences that might result from leaving a physically abused and openly bleeding thirteen-year-old girl alone on a footpath laying face down and unconscious.

Sometime after the girl stirred and forced herself up into a sitting position. One bony hand snaked up to touch her forehead, letting out a wince of pain as she did so to discover that it was grazed and openly bleeding. The girl sighed and forced herself to stand, the blood from the wound rolling down her face and down her tattered top. She paid barely any notice to this and very slowly limped into the alleyway where the three males had gone into sometime before.

The girl was slightly below the height of your average thirteen-year-old, her hair was dishevelled and her clothing was ripped and torn. Numerous bruises covered her body - most swollen - and she walked with a slight limp. She was extremely bony and dirt and grime covered her from head to toe; she had not washed in months and had consumed very little.

Five minutes later the girl arrived at a run-down building down the darkened alleyway which, to the locals around here was notorious as the housing for Retroville's drug addicted and homeless citizens.

The girl walked right in as if it were her home.

The inside of the building was in no better condition than the outside. The building had once been a family home, long since abandoned by it's former owners. Wallpaper peeled almost to ground level on the walls, up-turned and broken furniture lay in a mess all around and the floorboards creaked in all places no matter how quietly you tried to walk. Discarded packets which had once - to name a few - contained cocaine and heroin, long since consumed by it's owners littered the floor of the building, some still containing traces of the substances which they had held.

The dwelling reeked of booze and the musty smell of smoked marijuana reached all areas of the building.

The girl walked with her face lowered, limping, as she went. She trailed up the stairs, paying no attention to the gazes fixed on her from the other inhabitants of the building.

When she reached the first floor she turned directly right and walked up to a door at the end of a hallway. There she stopped and took a deep breath, steeling herself for what she knew would come. The girl lifted her hand, balling it into a fist and tapped lightly on the door. It slid open.

"Back again?" a voice she distinguished as male sounded from within the unlit room. The girl nodded.

"I take it you want to stay here for the night again?" the same voice said and once again the girl nodded.

Then the figure stood up and motioned for her to come in. She knew what was to come and without a word she stripped herself naked, exposing herself to the man.

The male shouts of intense pleasure and sexual gratification would shortly be heard all about the house and the screams of pain and distress of a young lady would be heard also. Not long after this the girl would leave, dressed once again in her tattered and ripped clothing and trail off into a room where she would spend the night weeping. Tomorrow she would go out into these drug and alcoholic infested suburbs again and she would scavenge for food – anything that was edible – and then at night she might fall asleep on a park bench or she might wander back here.

This was the life of Cynthia Aurora Vortex, now 13, homeless, alone and forgotten by all that had once cared for her. This was her life, her living hell.

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**A/N: Please tell me what you think. I know my writing is hardly what one could call good - decent even - and I make numerous grammar mistakes. In case you didn't know, this will be JC.**


	2. Chapter One

**Disclaimer: **The characters and the setting in which this story is based are copyrighted to Nickelodeon Inc and DNA Productions. The author of this story acknowledges that all characters herein are the express intellectual property of the two companies listed above and that the author does not possess, in any way, shape, or form the characters depicted henceforth.

All characters, places and settings are fictitious and any resemblances to persons or places in real life are purely coincidental.

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**Forgotten – a Jimmy Neutron ****fanfic**** by ****Nal'dralar**

**Chapter One**

The first rays of sunlight broke out over the eastern horizon line, bathing the city of Retroville in its familiar morning warmth and signalling the beginning of a new day filled with many opportunities. In the brighter suburbs both children and adults began to wake and greet the new day in preparation of whatever events or responsibilities they were required to partake in and fulfill. They met the day with acceptance, acknowledging that their time of rest was ended, that a new day had begun and that the new day demanded their presence once more. Soon, school children and teens alike would leave their homes and either be driven or make out on foot to their place of education, working class adults would make their way to wherever it was they were employed and the senior class citizens and those blessed with wealth would spend the day leisurely, enjoying life at its greatest.

But there were others, others not so fortunate. These were the lower class – the outcasts of society. They were what the middle and upper classes looked down upon, sometimes with sympathy or with pity. Sometimes even with hatred or downright sadism. They were the poor, the homeless, the unemployed; they were the unfortunate and the unblessed, they were the abused, the forgotten, the hated and the abandoned. They were what society despised, the failures of life – the underprivileged. All places had them but in each place their numbers varied, in some places their numbers were diminishing by the day as opportunities greeted them and turned their way of life back in a positive direction, but in Retroville, they were not nearly so fortunate. In Retroville they were left to themselves, the local governments caring next to nothing what happened to them; they left them to fend for themselves and if they couldn't survive then so be it – they would die.

In Retroville there were dozens of lower class and forgotten citizens, some had even come from the middle and upper classes, having met a foul blow of fate that left them spiralling downwards into the lower class. Their ages varied to a great extent, from the old to the very young. Indeed, many of the homeless were children left to fend for themselves by parents who had either been stripped of their lives through a cruel twist of fate or altogether abandoned through some unsound sense of reason.

One of these children was none other than Cindy Vortex, a child that had had her parents taken away from her at the innocent age of eleven. She lay now on a park bench in one of the outer suburbs of Retroville, close to the central business district where the population grew dense with people during the day and emptied out as dusk approached.

The previous night she had been forced to commit a crime, a robbery of sorts. She did this because she had no other choice, she was starved and no-one would help her, let alone even pay a glance her way. In the early hours of the morning she had waited outside a miniature food store awaiting a shopkeeper working overtime to exit the building and then had crept up behind him, using her last ounce of strength to knock his forehead into the shop's brick wall, rendering him momentarily unconscious. She had then taken his keys, still held in his right hand and unlocked the back door entrance and forced her way inside. She had grabbed several plastic bags then and taken anything and everything that could be readily consumed and then with the keys in tow dashed from the store, taking careful note that the man was still unconscious and that the entire street was deserted.

_Good_, she had thought then, _I am safe._

Acting as inconspicuously as was possible then in the rags she was clothed in she had walked through several blocks south-west of the food store and out of the central business district to an average-sized park, complete with play equipment, barbeques, public toilets and numerous park benches. She had picked one of the benches and had then collapsed upon it momentarily, her mind racing, trying to come up with a place to stash her stolen goods. It was then that she noticed the manhole, conveniently placed at the edge of the park and was somewhat loose. On the brink of exhaustion then, she had moved over and dropped the bags of stolen inventory on the ground, dumping the man's keys in one of them. She then conjured one last drop of strength, placing both her hands on the metal bar that lined the diameter of the round lid and turned it anti-clockwise, grimacing as she did so from the numerous cuts on her palm.

And then, with just a slight creak in protest, it had come loose. She had almost yelped then in exhilaration but instead forced a small grin to her parched lips. She had regretted it almost immediately, a nasty bruise just above the left side of her lip sending a reaction to her nervous system informing her of pain from the momentary creasing of her skin.

Ignoring the pain in both of her hands and left cheek then she had laid the lid atop the concrete and peered downward into the manhole. The interior was pitch black and even her keen sight, enhanced by the many years she had spent hiding out in dark alleyways or in abandoned buildings could not penetrate below. She had glanced about then, casting her eyes around the park which too was very dark; its only source of light coming from the moon – the city's local government was obviously too cheap to place streetlights in this section of town.

Sighing inwardly at her failure to steal anything for light before, she had then lifted herself up and, facing the manhole backwards she had bent down and clasped her hands to the ladder that protruded from below – the only thing the faint moonlight had illuminated – and had then carefully placed her feet on the first bar. To her surprise she had discovered the ladder was not long at all; she herself was over two thirds its height.

When she had reached the bottom she had found herself in a perfectly square chamber cut off from Retroville's main sewage system. The chamber itself was only slightly higher than her own height and it was made seemingly out of metal. She had felt cautiously along the sides of the chamber, searching for the end of the chamber and her probing hands had made contact with a metal gate blocking her passage to the main sewer system. The faint light from the other side allowed her to see a lock attached to the gate and a ladder immediately below. The ladder extended downward for at least five meters and she had felt a slight pang of nausea seek to overwhelm her – the lack of food and her innate fear of heights, even this short drop – was too much for her and she backed away.

She had made her way back to the ladder and climbed so that her upper body was protruding out of the manhole and through the plastic bags selected some self open able canned meat and removed it from the bag. Then one by one she had taken the plastic bags down and dumped them in the manhole before climbing back out and replacing the cover.

By then, the exhaustion and lack of nutrition had practically overwhelmed her. She had taken the meat and herself over to a park bench and pried the lid open, throwing it carelessly into a nearby bin and missing completely. Then, using her hand as a spoon she gobbled the meat up hungrily and finished within a minute. It had hardly been a meal, let alone a snack. Wearily, she eyed the can's label and determined that it had weighed only fifty grams.

_Still_, she thought,_ it's more than I've had to eat in a single meal in ages._

She slept then. Lying down on her side and curling herself up into a small ball, she had closed her eyes and tried to sleep. The night had been freezing and she guessed that it was less than five degrees, but she was used to the cold – she had been in far colder conditions than this. Within moments the exhaustion of the day had claimed her and she was asleep.

Once, her sleep had been her only respite from the life she was forced to live, but lately even that had changed. Her dreams were nightmare-filled and haunting and nowadays gave her no relief from the hellish life she led. They taunted her, they mocked her. They were dreams of the past and of the present, of things that had never occurred, of her worst fears. Tonight, they were of the past.

She dreamt of her past life, a life where her parents were still alive. The life of a normal eleven-year-old girl, one filled with innocence, of secret infatuations with those of the opposite sex that one never shared, of adventure and fun, of being carefree with not a worry in the world. A childhood that she had been so cruelly robbed of.

This night she had dreamt of an almost daily occurrence in her past life. She was in a classroom, wearing her usual light green tank top and brown pants and she bore a look of anger on her face. She was yelling at a boy, one that sported an oddly disproportionate head that resembled a football and brown hair almost as tall as his face. They were arguing, the subject on what they were arguing about unknown to her – her brain projected speech unintelligible but nonetheless she understood it all. It was nothing special, an unimportant dream. But it was her only memory of _him. _The only way she could recall him and all their daring adventures together. When she was conscious, she found it strange how she could still recall his face, his body, his features, what clothes he wore – anything at all. She remembered the soft fragrance of his hair from those few times they had touched or hugged, the way he moved but she remembered most of all her infatuation with him.

She had denied it at first, denied it so furiously in fact. How could she have this affection for someone that fate had seemingly meant for her to hate? She had debated it in her mind, never once relinquishing and sharing her secret to her friends. He was a nerd, a geek, he knew almost everything. But she liked him, perhaps even _loved_ him. In the end, she had admitted it to herself and come to terms with it, but still she shared the secret with no-one. Especially not him. Not even if her life depended on it would she admit it, she had sworn to herself. And then he had moved away, just like that. He told nobody he was going, he had just gone. Not even his friends had been informed and the day he didn't show up for school they had just assumed he was unwell. The shock and dismay they received when they tried to enter his lab after school, it was like the whole structure had just disappeared. His house was still there, of course. He had left no phone number, no note, not even a hint of where he had gone. Cindy had used her initiative and contacted the real estate agent that was in charge of selling the house but when she asked for a contact number she was turned down, the agent replying that the sale of the house was under the full discretion of the agent and that the owners had asked that they do not be contacted under any circumstance.

She had left them then, his friends and now hers as well. Libby, Sheen and Carl watched on as she pelted towards her own house and slammed the door shut. She was in tears at the realization that she would probably never see him again. When her mother had come home and yelled at her for being so feeble she had run off to a nearby park and cried even harder. She returned home several hours later, her eyes brimmed red and physically exhausted from the length of time she had spent crying.

Her parents had paid no attention to her as she walked in, not even glancing her way to check if she was alright. None of the sympathy and adoration that other parents would give their child was ever given to Cindy. Some could say they had an estranged relationship with their daughter and should've done more for their child and yet, as many children do, Cindy loved her parents still. They never abused her except on occasion verbally, and she could take that. They sheltered her, gave her a home, a place to live in and take refuge from the outside world, paid for her education and made sure she did well in school. They were the standard everyday parents but without the normal affection other parents would've showed their child.

Cindy wept all throughout that night, of lost opportunities that Jimmy and she could've shared. Of all the adventures they could've done together but more importantly that she would probably never _be_ in his presence again. She had always loved him, she realized now. It hadn't been overnight, the moment he had moved in that day, when she had looked upon him curiously and somewhat dreamily she knew that, as corny as it sounded; it had been love at first sight.

As she began to quietly doze off at around one in the morning - no longer having the strength to cry – she was shaken awake again by a shattering of glass downstairs and then the sound of somebody running up the stairs. Terrified, she clutched the covers and lay back on her bed pretending to be asleep. She heard somebody open and close the door and mutter something incoherent, the voice was raspy and unfamiliar to her and she was certain now that it was a robber discarding her room as the useless worthless possessions of a child.

And then she heard the screams. The scream was the voice of a woman she recognised as her mother's voice crying out her father's name in anguish.

And then she was pleading and screaming at the same time, "No! Please...not me, please..." and then one last piercing scream permeated the house, a scream that would haunt Cindy forever. High and guttural, it pierced her to the bone and sent chills all throughout her spine.

And then the murderer was gone, out the door and away in a car speeding at over a hundred kilometres an hour.

Cindy awoke then, the rays of the early morning sun over Retroville giving her warmth. Cindy had never seen the murderer, but had been witness to her parents' bodies. Stabbed through the heart and throats cut, it too was a sight that would haunt then-eleven-year-old Cindy forever.

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**A/N: Thank you for reading. I do apologise for this boring chapter but it was necessary to explain how and when Cindy's parents died. I apologise for the length of time that it took for me to update this; admittedly I don't have the heart to write any more. But I'll stick through with this story! Maybe...**

**As always, please review and give me your feedback on areas I could improve in.**

**Also no****te, the measurement for the temperature in the story was in degrees Celsius, not Fahrenheit. Don'****t think five**** degrees Fahrenheit would be very pleasant, at all.**


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